5.2.16

#545 Lost in Rosie

We are naturally aspirational
creatures, and can’t help chasing after perfection. Nearly every person on the
planet wishes they had perfect skin or the perfect body. The funny thing about
perfection is that it’s a slippery concept. 300 years ago the ideal woman had
small breasts, round hips and thunder thighs. In 1920s America a flat chested
boyish figure with a round face and teeny tiny lips was the beauty ideal. Women
would actually bind their breasts in order to achieve a flatter look. I most definitely
am glad I was not born in the 1920’s.

Effectively, you are not the one
who decides how to be beautiful, the culture around you does, through the
movies, fashion advertisements and editorials it produces. Ideals change with
the trends. One small spark can set off a forest fire, and all it takes is one
small seed of an idea to be planted to change how everyone sees the world.
Before the young and very girlish Kate Moss came along models were women.
Supermodels like Cindy Crawford had curves, muscles and broadness. Their whole
presence was about feminine strength. But Kate Moss transfixed everyone with
what was considered a strange kind of beauty at the time. Kate was small,
short, extremely thin and charmingly imperfect. Editors pointed out how she had
the look of a heroin addict, and then called her a “heroin chic” – in which a
radically new form of beauty was born. It was the spark that set the whole
industry on fire.

Photoshop the programme was
launched on February 19, 1990, just four months before Kate Moss’ big modeling
debut on the cover of The Face magazine. It was a remarkable coincidence. Photoshop
would go on to have as profound an effect on the fashion industry as Kate would
have on the appearance of models. It was a decided turning point in our
cultural perception of beauty – a point at which our standards and expectations
would begin to grow unreasonably high. Skin would become waxy smooth, teeth
flawlessly white, the body without a single fold, wrinkle, vein or bulge.
Suddenly smiling faces had no natural laugh lines and slouching bodies no sign
of skin folds. These are simply things that all bodies do, but thanks to the
extensive use of Photoshop in the media, the natural began to be not quite what
our real bodies and faces are supposed to look like.

In Secondlife the flawless beauty
still remains, the slight curve of the waist but the long elongated legs is
still around. Such beauty is what our designer for the day has created for us and
that being Elysium, and the beauty that awaits you of ‘Rosie’.

In Secondlife there is no harm to
use Photoshop, but do you think we should be photoshopping real beauty? Isn’t
the flaws all a matter of who we all are?

Showcasing for you today, I bring
to you the awesome collection of works from the following artists: -